Is EI enough to respond to the economic crisis?

Andrew Jackson has a good post over at the Progressive Economics blog on the need for better reporting on Employment Insurance claims in Canada. The US publishes monthly data on the average length of claims, including the number of claims that have been exhausted. Canada, in contrast, shares only the total number of claims and the average benefit in dollars. Therefore, we don’t know how many Canadians have exhausted their EI benefits without finding new employment, and how long those who did find a job needed to be on EI.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has breakdowns of these numbers, but they are not publicly reported. If official policy is that keeping EI low will encourage Canadians to move quickly on to jobs, it would seem fair that the data showing that people are moving on to jobs should be released.

What I think is more likely is that we would see that given the economic recession, Canadians are going to be exhausting their benefits.

Stanley Aronowitz noted at the USBIG Congress that unemployment insurance programs are insufficient to deal with an economic crisis because they are premised on the assumption that unemployment is temporary. Our economy isn’t likely to recover for awhile, and it will take longer for the employment rate to return to early-2008 levels once the economy does recover. In this climate, many people will run out of benefits without finding new employment, and they will have nothing to turn to once their benefits are exhausted. (The maximum length of benefits is 52 weeks, shorter for some regions deemed to have lower unemployment rates).

In Canada, of course, the problem is even greater since only 40% of the unemployed have access to EI.

We need public accountability on the impact of EI. There should be greater transparency on the need for EI, more accessibility to the unemployed, elimination of the two-week waiting period, and a more reasonable benefit level.

But moving forward, we will also need to look at alternate solutions. Is full employment possible, post-crisis, in our globalized economy? Can we expect every Canadian to earn what they need to live through paid employment, with temporary assistance in the case of job loss or illness? Or is it time to look at income security programs like guaranteed livable income that would actually ensure every Canadian has the basic resources they need to live healthy, dignified lives?